My early poems aspired to Keats and Blake;
were about magic, dreams, and heartbreak.

Most rhymed, were trite, and told more than showed;
rolled off the tongue, no taste of the acid down below.

Verse should consist of spit and bile;
extract vomit from an easy smile.

I don’t know who reads poetry now, or why;
whether they do it in the open, or on the sly.

See, between heat waves I mop up my sweat;
put out fires as if the world were a cigarette.

I do not smoke, alas, nor have time for metaphor;
and the ashes keep falling—too weighty to ignore.